NAME
WWW::Wikipedia - Automated interface to the Wikipedia
SYNOPSIS
use WWW::Wikipedia;
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
## search for 'perl'
my $result = $wiki->search( 'perl' );
## if the entry has some text print it out
if ( $result->text() ) {
print $result->text();
}
## list any related items we can look up
print join( "\n", $result->related() );
DESCRIPTION
WWW::Wikipedia provides an automated interface to the Wikipedia
, which is a free, collaborative, online
encyclopedia. This module allows you to search for a topic and return
the resulting entry. It also gives you access to related topics which
are also available via the Wikipedia for that entry.
INSTALLATION
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
METHODS
new()
The constructor. You can pass it a two letter language code, or nothing
to let it default to 'en'.
## Default: English
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
## use the French wiki instead
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'fr' );
WWW::Wikipedia is a subclass of LWP::UserAgent. If you would like to
have more control over the user agent (control timeouts, proxies ...)
you have full access.
## set HTTP request timeout
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new();
$wiki->timeout( 2 );
You can turn off the following of wikipedia redirect directives by
passing a false value to "follow_redirects".
language()
This allows you to get and set the language you want to use. Two letter
language codes should be used. The default is 'en'.
my $wiki = WWW::Wikipedia->new( language => 'es' );
# Later on...
$wiki->language( 'fr' );
follow_redirects()
By default, wikipeda redirect directives are followed. Set this to false
to turn that off.
search()
Which performs the search and returns a WWW::Wikipedia::Entry object
which you can query further. See WWW::Wikipedia::Entry docs for more
info.
$entry = $wiki->search( 'Perl' );
print $entry->text();
If there's a problem connecting to Wikipedia, "undef" will be returned
and the error message will be stored in "error()".
random()
This method fetches a random wikipedia page.
error()
This is a generic error accessor/mutator. You can retrieve any searching
error messages here.
TODO
* Clean up results. Strip HTML.
* Watch the development of Special:Export XML formatting, eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/perl
SEE ALSO
* LWP::UserAgent
AUTHORS
Ed Summers
Brian Cassidy
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 2003-2011 by Ed Summers
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.